Digging deeper on Royals opponent quality

The standard opponent quality numbers can be a bit misleading for KC.

Much ado was made last season of the Royals’ record against winning opponents. Namely, that they lost more than they won against opponents over .500. None of that prevented the Royals from sweeping the Orioles out of the Wild Card series and taking a game from the incredibly talented New York Yankees team in the Division Series before heading home for the winter.

Now that the Royals are in another tailspin following a couple of long winning streaks since their early-season bad stretch, some Royals fans and writers are once again pointing to their record against opponents over .500 to suggest the team just isn’t very good, And sure, if you draw your line at the arbitrary mark of .500, it looks bad. They’re currently sporting a .385 winning percentage against teams over .500. They do have a .727 record against teams under .500, though.

Of course, where you draw that line and how many lines you draw makes a huge difference. I decided to zoom and enhance a bit. Going back to before Thursday’s action, If you divide their opponents into those with a record over .550, under .400, and in between those two numbers, you get winning percentages of .231, .846, and .579, respectively. So obviously, they’re absolutely punishing the worst teams in the league, headed by their 7-0 record against the White Sox and Rockies, while struggling against the very best teams.

What probably surprises you about that set is that they’re doing quite well against every team with even a slightly worse record. (The Royals have a .542 winning percentage overall as of this writing. I know I put the divider line at .400, but none of the opponents the Royals have faced this season have a winning percentage between .400 and .450. The teams in that middle tier are all winning approximately half their games, give or take a few.

It would be easy to argue that of the good teams the Royals have beaten, they’ve just caught them at bad times. Those teams include the Twins, Astros (in the home series), and Rays. First of all, that’s factually incorrect. The Astros had won five of six, including sweeping the Blue Jays, before coming to Kansas City, and when they left, they immediately took two of three from the Tigers in Detroit. Before getting swept by the Royals, the Rays had won five straight and went to New York and immediately took two of three from the Yankees.

It’s true that the Twins were not doing especially well before the Royals took three of four from them, but they had also lost four straight before beginning their double-digit winning streak in Boston. And I imagine the Rockies and Astros thought they were getting the Royals at the right time when they came to town, too. Just because a team hasn’t been winning recently doesn’t mean they can’t get hot against you.

Yes, ultimately, if the Royals want to win the World Series, they’re going to have to beat the Tigers, Yankees, and Guardians of the world. But there is a whole lot of season left, and plenty could change between now and then. Heck, even while I was in the process of writing this article, things changed. During the process of writing this, the Twins and Guardians flipped tiers, which took the Royals from the .579 number cited above to all the way down to .476. That’s the last thing about strength of opponent metrics; no matter where you draw the line, it can change in a heartbeat.

Before a team can worry about winning the World Series, it first has to get to the playoffs. The Royals have fallen to fourth in the division thanks to Minnesota’s insane winning streak, but they’re still in the third Wild Card position. They’re on pace to win 88 games despite their slump. It’s just as silly to call them sellers now as it was to write them off in mid-September of last season. Maybe more so.

For years and years, Royals fans have asked only that their team be competitive. Things look dire right now, especially with the injuries in the starting rotation. But they’re holding their own nearly one-third of the way through the season. Let’s not give up on them just yet.